It’s not just the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) but also the non-IIT engineering colleges that have seen attractive job offers and compensation packages during their final placements this year.

Institutes like BITS Pilani, SRM University and Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) have registered robust growth in job offers.

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For instance, at VIT, ‘Super Dream’ offer, which is a salary package above Rs 1 million, was bagged this year by around 614 students against 360 last year. Moreover, dream offers, which is between Rs 4,50,000 and Rs 1 million has been given to 1,820 students so far and the recruitment under this category is still on.

“Some of the trends observed this year include higher salary packages and offers. Expectations of the recruiters are also growing, with higher demand for students having coding knowledge even with non-computer courses," said V Samuel Rajkumar, director, placement and training, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT).

At BITS Pilani, which has almost completed its first hiring cycle, the rate of placement has gone up by 20.4 per cent this year compared to last year. It had placed 844 students in the August to December cycle, against 700 last year. The second cycle will begin from January 2019 and go up to May-June 2019, wherein BITS Pilani is hopeful of getting around 95 per cent students placed.

Average compensation packages at BITS Pilani have risen from Rs 1.45 million per annum last year to Rs 1.55 million this year, with the highest package offered so far by an international company standing at $13,700 per annum.

At SRM University, with four more months of placement remaining, the institution has crossed around 5,000 offers on campus, of which around 4,730 are in engineering courses, till the third week of November. By then, it has seen a 30 per cent increase in the number of companies visiting the campus compared to the same period of last year.

Last year, for the whole placement season, it had seen around 540 companies visit the campus. The varsity hopes that more companies will come to the campus this year.

Sector-wise, the non-IIT engineering colleges are seeing a growing interest from captive research and IT companies.

Some of the new segments like biotech and biopharmaceutical engineering are also attracting interest from the industry, said senior officials from these institutions. “This year, the placement season is good. Biotech and Biopharmaceutical segments have seen better growth compared to two years back, which could be considered a new trend. The companies have become stringent in terms of tests. Salary packages saw an overall growth this year," said Sriram S Padmanabhan, director (Career Center), SRM University.

One thing that has been emphasised this year is that the companies are getting more stringent in terms of recruitment and those specialised positions which they recruit after rigorous selection also are seeing handsome salary packages.

Also, while companies hiring freshers have looked for basic skills so far, this year more niche and digital skills are in demand. Essentially hiring is up for analytics and data science.

“The data analytics space is picking up in a big way. Also, within the technology segment, artificial intelligence, internet of things and machine learning, the hiring is upbeat," said Balasubramanian Gurumurthy, chief placement officer at BITS Pilani, which has so far hosted 231 firms this year against 200 last year. Companies like PriceWaterhouseCoopers & ZS Associates are conducting workshops for students in some of these areas on campus.

Accenture, ZS Associates, Indus Insights, Epsilon and others are hiring for data science roles while companies like Microsoft, Intel & ServiceNow, are hiring in the IoT space. In the ongoing placement cycle of the academic year 2018-19, more than 55 students have been placed in data science roles.

Also, start-ups are one of the preferred sectors at the college as progression is faster in this sector, he added. Some of the major startups that participated were Cohesity, Zen drive & Swiggy offering compensation over Rs 20 lakh while Oyo rooms, Jivox & Hyperdart Technologies offered between Rs 10 and Rs 15 lakh.